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Speaking for others is violent, unethical – and worse, speaking for or on behalf of less privileged persons actually reinforces the oppression of the group spoken for Alcoff 1992 “The Problem of Speaking for Others” Cultural Critique Winter 91-92 pages 28-31 While the prerogative of speaking for others remains unquestioned in the citadels of colonial administration, among activists and in the academy it elicits a growing unease and, in some communities of discourse, it is being rejected. There is a strong, albeit contested, current within feminism which holds that speaking for others---even for other women---is arrogant, vain, unethical, and politically illegitimate. Feminist scholarship has a liberatory agenda which almost requires that women scholars speak on behalf of other women, and yet the dangers of speaking across differences of race, culture, sexuality, and power are becoming increasingly clear to all. In feminist magazines such as Sojourner, it is common to find articles and letters in which the author states that she can only speak for herself. In her important paper, "Dyke Methods,"
Joyce Trebilcot offers a philosophical articulation of this view. She renounces for herself the practice of speaking for others within a lesbian feminist community,

arguing that she "will not try to get others wimmin to accept my beliefs in place of their own" on the grounds that to do so would be to practice a 3 kind of discursive coercion and even a violence.
Feminist discourse is not the only site in which the problem of speaking for others has been acknowledged and

there is similar discussion about whether it is possible to speak for others either adequately or justifiably. Trinh T. Minh-ha explains the grounds for skepticism when she says that anthropology is "mainly a conversation of `us' with `us' about `them,' of the white man with the white man about the primitive-nature man...in which `them' is silenced. `Them' always stands on the other side of the hill, naked and speechless...`them' is only admitted among `us', the discussing subjects, when accompanied or introduced by an `us'..."4 Given this analysis, even ethnographies written by progressive anthropologists are a
addressed. In anthropology priori regressive because of the structural features of anthropological discursive practice. The recognition that there is a problem in speaking for others has followed from the widespread acceptance of two

where one speaks from affects both the meaning and truth of what one says, and thus that one cannot assume an ability to transcend her
claims. First, there has been a growing awareness that location. In other words, a speaker's location (which I take here to refer to her social location or social identity) has an epistemically significant impact on that speaker's claims, and can serve either to authorize or dis-authorize one's speech. The creation of Women's Studies and African American Studies departments were founded on this very belief: that both the study of and the advocacy for the oppressed must come to be done principally by the oppressed themselves, and that we must finally acknowledge that systematic divergences in social location between speakers and those spoken for will have a significant effect on the content of what is said. The unspoken premise here is simply that a speaker's location is epistemically salient. I shall explore this issue further in the next section.

certain privileged locations are discursively dangerous. In particular, the practice of privileged persons speaking for or on behalf of less privileged persons has actually resulted (in many cases) in increasing or reenforcing the oppression of the group spoken for.
The second claim holds that not only is location epistemically salient, but
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Speaking from your own location avoids inflicting ethical and political violence, and enhances experience Sligh 2006 “Jake in Transition from Female to Male”
http://www.umich.edu/~irwg/events/exhibits/clarissasligh.html

"I interrogate my location as a photographer while making pictures of Jake as he transitioned from female to male. How did life experiences, the perspective from which I see and understand, influence the framing of the image? At the time Jake asked me to photograph his sex change from female to male, in 1996, her name was Deb. Although the act had its own value and meaning, it was not my issue and I was wary of the ethical and political violence inherent in 'speaking for others.'" "I did not realize the complexity or intensity of the process when I started. And throughout the process I felt conflicted in my role as a documentary photographer. Although the bodily
mutilation through surgery and hormones seem fairly gruesome, these things in themselves do not provide the biggest

As I observe and support Jake in his changes so that his body can pass as a white man, I cannot help but think about the fact that I will never be able to change my brown skin to escape the layer of oppression one exeperiences from being black in America."
challenges for me. "Working with and supporting someone whose values and beliefs differ radically from my own is forcing me to face

the experience that is grounded in my body, the Self-Other conflict that reverberates with the history of the Master-Slave relationship, and its strong resonance within our culture that I continue to explore."
some things about myself that I never wanted to look at. It is